Re: Settle a Bet

Am 24.02.02, Jim Grossmann yscrifef:

> Help!
>
> I need to know if "eat" as in "She's eating." is transitive or intransitive.
>
> According to the SIL glossary, an intransitive verb is one that cannot take
> a direct object, like "come" "faint," etc.
>
> But according to The American Heritage Book of English Usage, an
> intransitive verb is simply one that doesn't happen to take an object, which
> would make "eat" intransitive in the sentence "She's eating."
I think it might be safe to try putting a logical D.O. after a
verb like that to see if it really is intransitive in this
instance. Clearly, if you put "a herring" after, the verb is
transitive. As you know, we can leave all sorts of things off
in English. I don't think that changes the nature of the verb
in question.

If you put "a herring" after "she fainted", you'll see that no
sense can be made of it. It remains intransitive.

To give another example,  look at the verb "hang". It has both
a transitive and an intransitive side:

Trans.     I hang the picture on the wall.
Intrans.   The picture hangs on the wall.

You can't stick a D.O. on the second one and still have it make
the same sense.

> I know that languages vary when it comes to marking verbs as intransitive
> and transitive;
If English had some kind of explicit tr/intr affix, then you'd
have no problem in your example above:

She's eatSENing a herring.
She's eatSENing.

You'd know the second one is trans. by the suffix -sen-.

I hangSEN the picture on the wall.
The picture hangDOWs on the wall.

You'd be able to tell which is which by the suffix I choose.

Or a language might choose one sort as the default (say, intr.)
which is unmarked. You could tell by the marked and unmarked
verbs: hangSENs v. hangs.

Padraic.
--
Gwerez dah, chee gwaz vaz, ha leal.